Friday, May 10, 2019

Competition Design for the New Spire of Notre Dame


Truly, truly, we live in a fallen age, in which the people who design these horrors can get coverage in places like the Times and the Met's own online magazine. This is Vincent Callebaut.


Alexandre Fantozzi, who wants to turn the whole roof into stained glass.

A Cyprus-based collective called Kiss the Architect. Unless this is a total spoof. Which it may be, I mean, it looks like a supervillain's ray gun.

Atelier Vizum.


Another greenhouse design, which the designer says will grow food for the homeless.

Fuksas.

Last and least, Mathieu Lehanneur. I suppose I'm going to have to ally with a bunch of cranky conservatives to fight this made desire for something new and modern. Sigh.

But you know who's winning the competition so far? Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. According to a recent poll, 55% of French people want to put the spire back exactly the way he designed it, with only 25% favoring a new artistic statement.
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2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

The Times and The Met don't have standards anymore. They're struggling to stay relevant in the digital age, and they're happy to resort to clickbait tactics, because there's nearly zero consequences for doing it.

They make money giving coverage to whatever architect or designer wants to buy their name/company/designs some time in the limelight, none of it matters, and in two week's time it's all forgotten because the news cycle has moved on to the next puff piece, election campaign forecast, or mass shooting report.

But none of this is new. We've been trending in this direction for 30 or 40 years now, at least. People are just finally waking up to the realization because the pace of it all has gotten so rapid and the coverage so ubiquitous. But the underlying problem has been obvious for decades - garbage in, garbage (and money) out.

May 10, 2019 at 11:07 PM
G. Verloren said...

"But you know who's winning the competition so far? Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. According to a recent poll, 55% of French people want to put the spire back exactly the way he designed it, with only 25% favoring a new artistic statement."

Unsurprising, as this is literally the default option.

Notre Dame is no longer so much a place of worship as it is a piece of pop art. It'd be like trying to give Mickey Mouse new ears. The collective imagination of Notre Dame as a shared icon or symbol pressures people to prefer the way it was, rather than some unfamiliar new alternative lacking in nostalgia and universal recognition factor.

If the entire building had been leveled and reduced to ruins, people would be more likely to entertain new ideas, as there would be more of a feeling of finality. (Although even then, there's still a considerable tendency to recreate what was lost, as has been done countless times with other cultural landmarks.)

May 10, 2019 at 11:22 PM

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